'The imagery of disability - Ismene Brown reviews the Candoco Dance Company at the Swan, High Wycombe.' Candoco have not always found works to match their talents, but currently they seem to have a couple of contrasting works that will amaze audiences worldwide

CandoCo Anything you can do It's not about issues for CandoCo, more a question of talent. By Clifford Bishop previewing their performances of their new show in London.

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Everywhere they go, people keep trying to give CandoCo Dance Company a platform, when all they really want is a flat, well-sprung stage. CandoCo are an integrated company, a mix of performers with and without disabilities, who tour extensively and punishingly. Since September they have been to Singapore, France, Sardinia, Russia, Lithuania, Italy and Romania, with further trips to France, the Czech Republic, the Republic of Ireland, the Philippines and Poland (not to mention ####) already in place for the rest of the summer. But they do this as jobbing performers and practical-dance teachers, not as missionaries or ambassadors, whatever expectations their hosts may have of them.

<B>CandoCo - One hand clapping, two chairs dancing (not that you'd notice, mind)</B> <P>'In 10 years Celeste Dandeker has made CandoCo a trend-setter - and not just because some of the company are disabled.'<P>By Peter Stanford in The Observer<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>When Celeste Dandeker introduces herself as a dancer, people often look askance for she is also a wheelchair user. We may have made the link between disability and sport, through watching the Paralympics, but dance remains another territory. Even when confronted with the evidence, sceptics can be hard to budge. <P>At a Sadler's Wells performance by CandoCo, the modern dance company Dandeker founded 10 years ago for able-bodied and disabled performers, a member of the audience was heard to comment: 'She's so good, you could almost believe that she was in that wheelchair all the time.' <P>'If only,' Dandeker laughs. Such prejudices would make some disabled people angry, but this 49-year-old is not one of nature's hotheads. Thin and graceful, with high cheekbones, big eyes and a gamine vulnerability, she has both the look and the manner of Audrey Hepburn's younger sister. She understands, she says, where the prejudices about disability and dance come from. For almost 18 years, she shared them.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> <P><BR><A HREF="http://www.observer.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,489860,00.html" TARGET=_blank><B>More...</B></A>

Choreographer Javier de Frutos is exploring disabled sexuality with CandoCo.

By Jenny Gilbert in The Independent

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Javier de Frutos ­ could there be any juicier name for a dancer? ­ has had to get used to a certain reputation going before him. "That gay guy who performs in the nude" is a hard one to shake off, no matter that he does many other things besides. And even after an hour in the company of this cheerful, baby-faced intellectual, reassuring in a woolly hat and talking nineteen to the dozen about his passion for Tennessee Williams ­ as well as 101 directing projects that do not involve wanton exposure of flesh ­ it's not hard to see why performers find the prospect of working with him scary.

Of all the art forms, dance - you might imagine - would be the one someone with a physical disability should avoid. Why go there? Why participate in a creative activity whose central core is about flexible joints and loose limbs ready to take on supple, lithe and graceful movements as the choreography demands? Yet, pushing out the boundaries of possibility - and acceptability - is an integral part of artistic expression. And it is into this space that CandoCo, one of the world's leading integrated contemporary dance companies fits.

Certain performing modes suit CandoCo's mix of able-bodied and disabled dancers particularly well: haughtiness, anger, sex, mystery, power. All these emotions fall well outside the soggy image that dogged the company's early years, butin CandoCo's latest programme there is little caring and sharing on view. The three choreographers who have collaborated with the group simply take the performers (who include two wheelchair-users and a dancer with an amputated leg) as a source of inspiration.

CandoCo's new programme is its best yet, culminating in Fin Walker's Shadow for six performers who use wheelchairs.

Walker's rigorous pattern-making assembles wheel-chairs and bodies, large and slight, into an ever-shifting unit. Thanks to Ben Park's quixotic music that is played live on stage, its precision never seems mechanical.

The dancers here also looked particularly good and all three of their pieces successfully played around with the mix of physical ability and disability that is the company's raison d'être. Jamie Watton's collaborative Phasing uses David Lock's wheelchair to vary visual levels and create interesting group sculptures. The limpid, direct dance felt light years away from Fagan's awkward intricacies and perfectly matches Steve Reich's dappled, translucid New York Counterpoint. Production values are excellent, with beautiful lighting by Lucy Carter which gives the three performers a stunning exit along a corridor of lighted squares pulsating with the music.

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